No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Trump courthouse scheme backfires in brutal fashion

Episode Date: May 19, 2024

There are major implications – good and bad – of Trump’s parade of red-tie wearing mouthpieces doing his bidding outside of the courthouse in NY. Brian interviews Congressman Daniel Goldman about why Trump is so desperate to have Republican lawmakers violate the gag order on his behalf, whether he’s worried about a sleeper Trump supporter on the jury, and what to do about the corruption on this Supreme Court. Pre-order Shameless: https://www.harpercollins.com/pages/shamelessShop merch: https://briantylercohen.com/shopYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/briantylercohenTwitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohenPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/briantylercohenNewsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-upWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today we're going to talk about the implications good and bad of Trump's parade of red tie wearing mouthpieces doing his bidding outside of the courthouse in New York. And I interview Congressman Daniel Goldman about why Trump is so desperate to have them violate the gag order on his behalf if he's worried about a sleeper Trump supporter on the jury and what to do about the corruption on the Supreme Court. I'm Ryan Tyler Cohen and you're listening to No Lie. So because satire is dead at the hands of this Republican Party, we've now seen a bunch of identically dressed. Republican supplicans parading themselves around outside of the courthouse in New York to do what Trump can't do, which is to attack the judge's family and witnesses because Trump is bound by the gag order, but they're not. Here's just a small sampling.

And they've got this gag order against him. That's why we went up there so that we could say the things that this judge is corrupt judge is not allowing him to say. Now, I would like for anybody, anybody here in the press, anybody at home, anybody in MSNBC or the media afterwards, to clearly state what exactly is the country? crime that Donald Trump committed. I'll wait. We have not heard a good answer to that question. In the midst of all this nonsense and corruption, they have placed a ridiculous and unprecedented gag order on President Trump. They were overriding his constitutional right to defend himself

from political smears from his harshest critics at the most important time. He is soon to be officially the nominee of one of the major parties in our country, running for president. And they We have him tied up here in this ridiculous prosecution. And there's nothing wrong. There's nothing that has been wrong here. Nothing that has been done poorly by President Trump. The only thing that's being done wrong is by this judge. His daughter's making money, raising money for Democrats.

What we've learned is that Michael Cohen, who has no credibility, who has purged himself multiple times, who has zero integrity, has actually admitted to defrauding the Trump organization. So the obvious question, a legal question first. Is this a violation of Trump's gag order? No, not unless prosecutors can prove that Trump directed them to say these things. Did he, I mean, maybe? But also, even if he didn't, these people exist to serve this guy. And so he wouldn't really need to.

The fact that they're pouring into the courthouse, like their 16-year-old girls who just found out that Taylor Swift is playing a free concert at the park, goes to show that these guys aren't really people that necessarily need to be persuaded to do Trump's bidding. These guys are so desperate for his validation that they are literally, literally, Literally, dressing like him. Just a little gaggle of red tie-wearing ducklings who've all imprinted onto Donald.

So that's the deal with the legal stuff. Is it worth it to try and prosecute Trump because he's using them as a workaround for his gag order? Not really. Even if he did order them there, like what? Do you expect these Republican officials who exist to serve their god king

to actually admit that during a show cause hearing? Never going to happen. Okay, so let's talk about the impacts of this then, both on the Republican base and on Americans more broadly. So first off, the impacts on Trump's base. Is this giving those people some major permission structure to come back home to Trump by virtue of the rest of these officials going out there and basically telling them Trump is totally innocent? Certainly possible.

Remember, the latest Reuters-Ipsos poll from last month found that 24% of Republican voters would not vote for a convicted felon. So maybe these lawmakers see the writing on the wall and are basically trying to water down the inevitable conviction to, like, soften the blow if and when it happens. But more likely, this isn't even for the Republican base, it's for Donald Trump. Like, I'd venture to guess that they're actually just performing for an audience of one. Maybe they're vying for the VP slot, like Doug Bergam or Vivek Ramoswamy or Byron Donald. Maybe they want a cabinet position. Maybe they just know that they have to kiss the ring or risk excommunication from the party.

But look, you don't literally dress like the guy if you're not sucking up to him as hard as humanly possible. This is for him. This is for Donald. They want his attention. They want his validation and approval and maybe even a nice post on truth social that they can print out and frame and feel like they have some purpose in life. And they know, by the way, that he only responds to, like, abject, breathless sycophancy. The more demeaning, the better. And so that's what they're giving him.

This is a guy whose lifeblood is agilation. And lucky for him, he is surrounded by people so devoid of dignity that they're happy to demean themselves to the core of the earth to give it to him. Now, here's where I think that it backfired on them. I want to talk about the implications on the broader electorate. Think about the message that this shows that these people, these Republican elected officials, will stop at nothing to support Donald Trump. Here's the perfect encapsulation of what I mean. Mike Johnson is a self-proclaimed, devout Christian.

Dude presents himself as like the living embodiment of the Bible itself. And so for that guy, to voluntarily go to New York so that he can carry water for a criminal defendant who paid hush money to a porn star. for an affair he had while his wife was at home with their infant son really does give the whole game away here. There are no principles, no values, no morals that they won't immediately cast aside in their groveling desperation to appeal to Trump. Like when you've got the Jesus guy sprinting up to New York

to defend the porn star guy, you get a sense that they're all in, right? And so a second Trump term would be full capitulation. There won't be any Mike Pence's or Brad Raffensbergers or Mark Espers or Thai cobs stopping Trump from doing whatever he wants them to do. That's the message that these people are sending. They will offer a full green light to Donald Trump to carry out his agenda, which thus far, his promise would include terminating the Constitution, sending the military into Democratic cities,

signing a nationwide ban on abortion, supporting a national pregnancy registry, supporting 11 million undocumented immigrants who've only known the U.S. as their home, and so much more. That's what you should take out of the fact that these doormats are falling over themselves to defend him outside of the courtroom. These Republicans are offering us the warning right now in real time.

It's our job now to listen to it. Okay, before we get to my interview with Congressman Goldman, just a quick reminder that I've written a book. It's called Shameless. It's available now for pre-order. I would really appreciate if you would grab it online, and if you order within this pre-order period, then you can get assigned to bookplate.

Just follow the link in the show notes of this episode to submit your proof of purchase. And to purchase it, of course, you can search for Shameless by Brian Tyler Cohen, anywhere, on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or, of course, your nearby independent bookseller online. Again, it's available everywhere, and thank you so much for ordering. Okay, next up is my interview with Congressman

Daniel Goldman. Now we've got New York Congressman Daniel Goldman. Thanks so much for taking the time. Thanks for having me, Brian. So I want to get to Donald Trump's trial in New York, but before we even get into the courtroom, we've seen his little band of mouthpieces and sycophants literally dressed like him,

defending him outside of the courthouse. What was your reaction to seeing these people, not in Congress, where they are paid to be, but rather defending this criminal defendant on trial for falsifying business records related to hush money payouts for his affair with a porn star while his wife was at home with their infant son? I alternate between just feeling sorry for them because of how pathetic it is and being incredibly angry that they're using their official authority as members of Congress to try to interfere in an ongoing criminal trial. This is just yet another attack on the rule of law.

It's an attack on our criminal justice system. And they seem to think that our criminal justice system can be used as a weapon by Donald Trump, but to the extent that Donald Trump falls into its crosshairs, then of course that's illegitimate. And the hypocrisy and inconsistency speaks for itself, but it's really a shame that they are using their time, when there's plenty of stuff we could be doing to help the American people in Washington to go up and prostrate themselves in front of Donald Trump so that they can get a favorable treatment from their cult's leader. Well, you know, to that point, oversight Republicans postponed

what they purportedly claimed was an urgent hearing on contempt for Attorney General Merrick Garland so that their members can go to this trial this morning and just a few days back. Can I get your response to that? I mean, even their own profess priorities, they're discarding in favor of this. Well, it's interesting. I'm on the Oversight Committee, and our hearing got pushed back until tonight. There is no basis for the Oversight Committee to be dealing with a contempt issue related to the Attorney General and the Department of Justice.

That falls squarely under the jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committee. And what they are seeking has absolutely nothing to do with the failed, bogus sham impeachment inquiry that they have been operating at an unbelievable failure for a year and a half. And so it's a politicized thing anyway to try to give Chairman James Comer some off ramp, some credit for being able to be tough on the Biden administration. after he flopped so seriously on the impeachment inquiry. More broadly, what does this kind of sycophantic groveling, like the kind that we're seeing outside of this courthouse, imply would happen if Donald Trump took power again? Like, would there be any moderating forces against him this time around

if he wins in 2024? No, and we've already seen it, and he hasn't even won yet. We saw it with what happened with the Senate bipartisan border security bill that would, was quite, quite aggressive. There were many provisions of it that I did not love, but it was President Biden demonstrating that he wants to govern, he wants to solve the problems, and he's willing to work across the aisle to do that. But Donald Trump submarine did solely because he wants chaos at the border, because he wants to run on the border issue. And he convinced all these House Republicans

who are now up in New York trying to kiss his butt, that they should sabotage it. And then ultimately he convinced enough Republicans in the Senate to undermine it so that it didn't pass. And just imagine what will happen when he is president and he has such firm control over the Republican House and the Republican Senate as Mitch McConnell is leaving as leader, paving the way for a new MAGA leader in the Senate, he will have total control and he will do

whatever he wants. And we know that what he wants, because he says the quiet part out loud, is the basic destruction of our democratic institutions and our system of government as we have known it. Do any of your Republican colleagues, like, disagree with this? Do you hear, you know, as far as, as far as these people going to the courthouse and just making themselves supplicants for Donald Trump, do they disagree with it? Do you hear from any of these people behind the scenes that this is a circus and that they all look like clowns? There are some who I definitely hear from, who are frustrated by it, who question it, who do not like it. Most of them are pretty quiet and not coming out against Donald Trump, but they're not coming out strongly in favor of him.

The ones who are coming out so strongly in favor of him are doing it out of pure, personal and political ambition. I mean, when you look at someone like Elise Stefanik, who came in to Congress as a moderate, thoughtful, reasonable Republican, and did a 180 when she saw an opportunity to kiss Donald Trump's ass and try to emerge as a leader under the MAGA hat within the Republican Party. And what she says now is so consistently contrary to what she has said before, and it's so pathetic that she has sacrificed all of her morals and integrity just to placate Donald Trump for her own political ambition. And there are others like that as well. So it's a mixed back. Well, the worst part about that is that she knows exactly who she's fooling by virtue of

doing this. She's just, I mean, it's not it's not the Democrats who can't see what she's become. It's her own audience that she's perfectly content to pull the wool over their eyes because, you know, because she's just operating in blind deference to Donald Trump. Why do you, why do you, you think that this is so central to their strategy for Trump's team to, and I mean that more broadly, just like the entire Trump like universe here, to violate his gag order, even if it means bringing in these Republican officials from Washington? Well, Donald Trump's entire defense to all of the criminal cases against him is political. He has from the get-go had a very politicized defense, which has nothing to do with the actual facts or merits of the case, but is claiming

this false, bogus claim of election interference that these prosecutions are designed to take up his time or get him off the ballot or all this stuff, when in reality, all of the investigation started long before he ran for president. And he declared so early just so that he could make this bogus defense. But those political defenses do not. work in a court of law and in a court of law he will not be able to make to the jury any of these arguments he will need and his lawyers will need to focus on the facts to focus solely on the evidence and whatever the law is that applies and that's what the jury is charged with doing the question is jurors are instructed not to read or see or watch or anything related to the trial um and And if they uphold that oath, then all of the circus outside is completely irrelevant. The risk, of course, is that because it's so much in the news, it's everywhere, that it's hard for jurors to avoid all association with it. And that's clearly what the Republican members of Congress are hoping.

They are literally trying to tamper with the jury by speaking out in ways that Donald Trump cannot in a purely politicized. effort to interfere with this case. And a byproduct of that, even if they realize, even if Donald Trump realizes that this trial itself may be a lost cause, at least he can continue to appeal to the American people and try to win this thing in the court of public opinion and just continue to hammer away at this idea for his voters in advance of an unfavorable result of a conviction being handed down to poison the well for the rest of the American people and to undermine what the jury might come forward and say. You know, as for this trial,

Trump's attorneys are right now engaged in their last-ditch effort to try and undermine Michael Cohen's credibility. And that was after Cohen had pretty damning testimony against Trump, along with Stormy Daniels and the other witnesses. But at the end of the day, Michael Cohen went to prison for the exact crime that Trump facilitated and is being tried for right now. So do you think Todd Blanche's efforts are going to be successful here? He's got, look, he's got a lot to work with. Let's be clear. Michael Cohen has a lot of warts. as a witness. He has admitted to lying under oath. He has said inconsistent statements under oath since he admitted to lying under oath. So there is plenty to work with. I think the strategy

from the district attorney's office was very smart to put him last because what the district attorney was able to do is lay out the entire case to the jury through other witnesses. And so as Michael Cohen is testifying, the jury will have in their mind what Stormy Daniels testified about, what David Pecker testified about, whether there are phone records that match up with these conversations that they're talking about, all of the corroborating evidence is in. And so that helps to bolster Michael Cohen's testimony. Many of the jurors will probably be leaning one way or another by the time Cohen testifies. And so while he is an essential witness, he is not the focal point of the case because they put him last much more as a corroborating witness than a star witness. Is there any worry that you have about some sleeper Trump supporter on the jury? Look, I wouldn't call it a worry. I think I believe strongly in our criminal justice system.

I served as 10 years as a federal prosecutor. I did numerous trials and had juries that I spoke in front of, argued in front of, tried cases in front of. And I believe in our jury trial system. And I think if you believe in our jury trial system, you have to believe that whatever the outcome here is an appropriate outcome. And so I do not have a predetermined determination as to what the outcome should be. I don't know what all the evidence is. I'm not in the courtroom. I haven't seen all of it.

We can talk about the thrust of what the most important pieces of evidence are. But a jury's job is to very carefully apply the law to the facts and evidence as presented in that courtroom. And I believe in the rule of law. I believe in our justice system, and therefore I will put my faith in the jury and whatever it decides. What is frustrating is that my Republican colleagues clearly do not. They do not believe in our criminal justice system as it applies to their dear leader, Donald Trump. They do not believe in the rule of law. They are trying to manipulate and move the needle and make a predetermination as to what the outcome should be based on a lack of evidence. And that's dangerous. And it's that

kind of thinking and that kind of attitude that Donald Trump has persuaded so many in the Republican Party to have through his own rhetoric, that is part of the reason why he is so dangerous as a presidential candidate, because it will get worse and worse and worse. There is no question that he will use the Department of Justice as a personal weapon to go after any of his enemies. And there's no question that that's just the tip of the iceberg. There is much, much worse stuff that he will do. Well, this will likely be the only criminal trial that Trump sits through before the election owed to the fact that the Supreme Court gave Trump the delay that he was seeking by not only agreeing to hear the arguments on this insane notion of presidential immunity like he's

claiming in the DC trial, but literally waiting until the end of their term or likely waiting on the end of their term to actually rule on it. There are a lot of folks out here despairing over this Supreme Court. So as far as you're concerned, what's the solution to a branch of government that views itself as an extension of the Republican Party, either legislating or even stopping prosecutions of criminals from the bench. Look, the Supreme Court is a massive, massive problem right now. And I don't say that solely because I disagree with their opinions, which I do and which I think are not only legally flawed,

but also procedurally flawed in the sense that they have professed to be strict construction, abiding by the strict rule of the strict letter of the law and that they don't legislate from the bench and that they that they are very measured and that that's their whole mantra that they're going to only address the questions that are presented to them they're going to follow stare decisis they're going to follow precedent this supreme court has demonstrated that that is all BS none of what they are doing is who they claim to be They are now not activists on the bench in a way that we've never seen before. They have made up doctrines that allow the Supreme Court to just overrule the experts in the executive branch in implementing laws. They have undermined and completely ignored settled precedent because they just don't agree with it, which runs completely contrary to our basic foundations of the Supreme Court. And worse, worse yet, they have demonstrated egregious disclosure and ethics violations that compromise their integrity and that in the case of this absolute immunity, Donald Trump case, creates an actual conflict of interest. Because Clarence Thomas's wife was involved in the underlying facts of that case.

many judges, and especially in the lower courts, are required to recuse if there's an appearance of a conflict of interest. This is an actual conflict of interest, and Clarence Thomas has not recused himself. It is an abomination. It is destroying all credibility and legitimacy of the Supreme Court, and it continues to be a major, major problem. On a similar note, you know, when it comes to the appearance of a conflict, you've got Judge Cannon down in Florida, who there are multiple appearances of conflicts. You know, right away she interfered on Trump's behalf, which provoked her being rebuked by the circuit court. Then there was her moving forward with these potential jury instructions that would be predicated on a bungled interpretation of the Presidential Records Act.

Basically, Donald Trump's interpretation of the Presidential Records Act, which is completely backwards. And then finally, her decision to indefinitely postpone this trial. And that was at the same time that Jack Smith offered a date of July as a trial date and even Trump's defense team offered a date in August as their date. And she disregarded both of them, even the, even the defenses delayed date and just decided to delay indefinitely. And yet at the same time, Jack Smith has opted not to seek any type of motion to recuse or to remove her.

Do you agree with that decision? Because I have a lot of trouble kind of reconciling why he would opt not to do that, given that she's already very clearly hostile to the prosecution's case anyway? Look, it's a very hard motion to win, and you would have to show affirmative evidence of bias in order to have her recused. And what we see are circumstantial facts that lead one to conclude that she is heavily favoring Donald Trump. But if she's, if she's, will have or, you know, the court will look and say, well, if there is a plausible reason for her to do any of this separate and apart from favoring Donald Trump, then you lose the

recusal motion. And my guess is that the prosecutors want to be careful of that because if they do move to recuse her, they want to make sure they win. Doesn't the federal law require that a judge has a step away from a case in which their impartiality, and this is a quote, might reasonably be questioned. Don't we have enough of a predicate to at least reasonably question Judge Cannon's impartiality here? I'm not sure that we have legally enough of a predicate. And I guess that's different from, you know, what our impression is that there's clearly a predicate. She is clearly ruling in every way to favor Donald Trump to delay things. It is also a lengthy and complicated

process to deal with the classified document case. So that is a legitimate reason why these things generally take longer. But you would have to be able to show that there is evidence that she's being impartial. And simply ruling in favor of Donald Trump is insufficient to show that there's real solid evidence of that. Okay. I want to move over to the polls for a moment. And I am by no means like in a poll alarm, a poll alarmist. I think personally, the better option is just to keep our heads down and do the work and keep reminding people about the stakes of this election. But that doesn't change the fact that the polls are still concerning right now. And many of them do show Biden down in key states across the

country. So what's your reaction or what are you, what's your message to folks who see these polls at this point six months out and get worried about them? I think a lot of these polls, which are polls are always just a snapshot in time. And what's going on right now and what has been going on for the last several months is, I think, something different than what the American people will see and hear as we move closer to November. And what I mean by that is that we've been very focused on passing a budget. We've been very focused on the bipartisan border negotiations. We've been very focused on the supplemental aid bill, as has the president. For the most part, those things are in the past now.

And now we're really going to focus on what's been going on in this country over the last four years. And what the American people will see is that there is not only a historic effort and ability by this president to pass legislation that will dramatically improve the lives of Americans, that will increase and improve our economic competition with our adversaries, that will make the climate much, much safer and stop climate change, that will reduce prescription drug prices, and is already reducing prescription drug prices, and that will preserve and secure Social Security and Medicare.

And one of the things that we will be talking about, is what all of the different efforts that our policies in this administration has taken to lower costs and lower prices and address what was an inherited inflation issue to keep the economy humming, but also to continue to try to right size wages and costs so that people who do have jobs do not feel the pinch of affordability

that they have been feeling. And when you combine that with the threat of Donald Trump to abortion rights and make no mistake, he will sign a national abortion ban if he'd given the opportunity, and all of the threats against democracy that he presents, because he will try to take over our government as an authoritarian, anti-democratic leader,

and you combine the positive work of President Biden and the dangers of Donald Trump, you can make a very good case. But now we are turning to making that case. And I also think that people will start to recognize, Brian, and this is important, that whatever you think about these candidates, November presents a binary choice between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. And you may have some issues with Joe Biden, whether it be policy or politics or otherwise. But the one thing that no one can deny is that he is an incredibly decent human being who cares unbelievably about the United States and always acts in the United States interest.

And that is in direct juxtaposition to Donald Trump, who is a narcissistic maniac who uses the power of the official office of the presidency for his own personal gain. and we'll do everything to use the presidency going forward for his personal interests, not the interests of the United States. And that's just a foundational thing that nobody can deny. Well said. Finally, let's finish off with this. You're running for re-election in a safe blue district. Meanwhile, there are enough seats in New York alone, which is part of your delegation there,

to flip the House. So what are you doing to help other Democratic candidates in New York ahead of November's election? I'm very focused on this. We're all very focused on this because New York is probably a majority maker and that if we can pick up three seats in New York, which I believe we can do, then we'll be able to take the House majority. And so all of us are invested in the races in New York that are the swing districts. We've got some great candidates, a couple of whom have run before. And we have a very strong. case to make because what you have seen in the House this Congress is the most chaotic dysfunctional House under Republican leadership. And when you compare it to the last Congress under Nancy Pelosi's leadership, which had a historic record of accomplishment and achievement, the contrast is so remarkable. And what you have in New York is a bunch of professed moderate Republicans. who have completely just caved to the MAGA wing of the Republican Party.

And they are a rubber stamp for a national abortion ban, for Donald Trump, for lowering taxes on the wealthy, for gutting Social Security and Medicare. All of these Donald Trump MAGA policies have the support of all of the Republican candidates in New York. And that is not what New York wants. And so we will be out there making that point. repeatedly. Excellent. Congressman, thanks so much for taking the time.

Thank you, Brian. Thanks again to Congressman Goldman. That's it for this episode. Talk to you next week. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen. Produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie, and interviews edited for YouTube by Nicholas Nicotera. If you want to support the show, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app and leave a five-star rating in a review. And as always, you can find me at Brian Tyler Cohen on all of my other channels, or you can go to

for Brian Tyler Cohen.com to learn more.